A Tropical New Year

Happy New Year everyone !     We had a wonderful time celebrating last night with good friends until the wee hours of the morning.   I can never sleep in, so here I am enjoying the morning in my craft room with a cup of tea.

I have a good view of the snow & trees in our backyard from my craft room.   It's very pretty but I'm dreaming about tropical places & flowers !

I created this card using the Cathie Allan "Stamp Smoosh" technique, which is easy.   I enjoyed taking a class with Cathie at the Scrapfest show last Fall.    This stamp is a Poinsettia but I used tropical colours which is a vibrant change from all the Christmas cards and snow themes etc.

This stamp, F5434 Poinsettia Bloom by Hero Art, is a solid image which works well with the 'stamp smoosh' technique.  (start with your lightest colour, stamp down hard and give your wrist a little twist to 'smoosh' the ink)    Fluid Chalk Inks work well as they dry quickly to allow you to 'lay down' your next colour.  I used  heavy white card stock and ColourBox Fluid Chalk Ink set Ocean Breeze - starting with Lime Pastel, then Ice Jade and finally Aquamarine.     I stamped the flower out again with ColourBox Pigment Harbour, in a 'normal' manner.  I embossed these with clear powder.   I stamped out one extra flower to cut and pop up on the card.   I have a hard time making a card without some kind of dimension added.   

Because the background has a lot going on, I really didn't want to cover it up with much else.   I added some ribbon, a charm and a few lime green stickles on the darkest flowers and matted onto co-ordinating card stock.  I used a nestability label - S4347 with a sentiment from Inkadinkado (96614 set) which was also stamped with Colourbox Harbour Pigment Ink, embossed with clear and then inked with Peeled Paint Distress Ink using the die for a mask. 

Thanks for stopping by and I wish you all the best for a Happy, Healthy & Creative 2012 !
Cheers
Shirley